Almost 10 million Taiwanese aged 15 or older, or 48.8 percent of the population, had higher education of a sort, an increase on previous years, as of the end of last year, according to a report released by the Ministry of Education in April.
Taiwan has a population of just more than 23 million people, which means that almost one in every two Taiwanese has been educated to university level.
Taiwan, then, is a “highly cultivated” nation, but is that really the case?
Causing chaos, cutting in line, indiscriminate littering and discarding cigarette butts on the street, speaking loudly on the phone and loutish behavior are part of the everyday experience in Taiwan.
What happened to all that education and cultivation?
During the Double Ten National Day holiday weekend, a woman took the high-speed rail with her family and saw a table full of trash left by a passenger, including used tissues and leftover coffee. At first, she started cleaning the mess up, but she was uncomfortable about touching the tissues and a stirrer used by someone else, so she asked an attendant for help.
The woman said that taking away your garbage when you ride the high-speed rail is just basic manners, and she could not understand why some people do not seem to be able to do this.
A former high-speed rail employee said that he had also seen used tissues left on seats and that it was disgusting.
It is not just the high-speed rail: There have been numerous examples on trains operated by the Taiwan Railways Administration.
There are tales of a woman using the pillow cover of the seat as a napkin while eating food, another passenger using the pillow cover to clean their shoes, while another took it home as a souvenir. Then there are the passengers who take off their shoes and socks, cross their legs and plant their feet on another person’s seat. The mind boggles.
If this kind of thing happened 50 years ago, we could perhaps attribute it to ignorance and lack of education. That no longer applies.
Decent behavior in public is not rocket science, it merely requires a bit of self-discipline, empathy and an understanding of the importance of not making life difficult for others. At its simplest level, public morality is self-awareness without the need of being reminded to behave appropriately by those around you.
Unfortunately, many Taiwanese lack the kind of introspection that this requires and do things their own way without a single thought for whether their selfish actions would trouble others.
Lacking this kind of self-discipline and self-reflection, how can people be expected to act as decent citizens or benefit from education? They might have been highly educated, but, as the saying goes, “all that glitters is not gold.”
Nothing beats a good upbringing at home and moral education.
So-called “competency-based education” is not enough, schools also need to instill in students an awareness of how to behave properly, so that they internalize it and make it habitual.
Shiao Fu-song is a lecturer at National Taitung University.
Translated by Chien Yan-ru
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